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The reigning Best Driver’s Car champion returns to defend its title, this time in its sexier and slightly more luxurious grand touring spec. In addition to a solarium-sized sunroof and nicer leather, the 570GT softens the original’s supercar suspension just enough to earn its merit badge.

Under the new rear glass and handbag storage area, the mid-mounted 3.8-liter twin-turbocharged V-8 remains. It makes 562 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque—though it now pulls around an extra 170 or so pounds—and it’s mounted directly to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. Short axle shafts send the power right over to the rear wheels. In that aspect, McLaren softened the springs slightly, slowed the steering ratio a tad, and changed a few calibrations while retaining the 570S’ sporting character as much as possible. Our car was fitted with optional carbon-ceramic brakes, naturally.

At 3,346 pounds, the 570GT isn’t heavy. It’s definitely quick; 60 mph flashes across the digital instrument cluster in just 2.8 seconds, and you’ll blow through the quarter mile in a blistering 10.7 seconds at 131.9 mph. Stopping the carbon-fiber screamer from 60 mph requires 100 feet, owing in part to its narrow front tires. It’ll pull 1.03 g average on the skidpad and nail a 23.2-second lap on the figure eight at 0.94 average g.

We Say

“Perhaps my expectations were too high. I was waiting for the magic, but against such a strong field of cars, it was more like a great card trick in a show where other acts had more smoke and mirrors. It was not as smooth or fast as the Ferrari, nor did it make me feel like I was a pro the way the Italian car did.” – Alisa Priddle

“It’s powerful and handles nicely, but it didn’t give me the confidence to go for more. Like its name suggests, this is a GT car, not a best driver’s car. It’s a car that gets the attention because of its looks, but it’s not as good when compared to the other cars we have here.” – Miguel Cortina

“This car isn’t sure what it wants to be. It’s been softened so much that it’s no longer a super car, but it hasn’t been softened enough to actually make it a grand touring car. It’s an in-betweener. It’s No Man’s Land. It’s not great. The powertrain still thankfully responds like the 570S from last year. It’s lightning in a bottle. On a back road like 198, I thought the steering was good, but it was missing that sense of life and vitality that we all so loved last year.” – Christian Seabaugh

“Everything about this car seems very scientific and technical, which some judges will claim makes it sterile and unemotional. They would be incorrect; this is the sports car for the modern era—albeit with a sunroof that doubles as a convection oven. It is not as forgiving at the extreme as the Ferrari, but McLaren still feels like it has the proper ambiences. That’s not to say it’s without its thrills, because this is a thrilling machine, and the only one on the entire 198 day that gave me any thought of letting the rear wheels slide out exiting a corner coming off the apex at a solid 90 mph. It was so reassuring that I could do that.” – Mark Rechtin

Randy Says

“This is McLaren: it says ESC off, but I don’t believe everything’s off. It was very hard to spin the tires. Almost every corner when I turned in, I had an entry snap oversteer, and I had to correct it real quick, and then it understeered. From then on the front end just had nobody home, and I can feel it roam a lot, and kind of fall over. That snap is very common in McLarens, but it’s as if it has a very smooth stability and traction control still working even when it says everything’s off. You would have no problem driving this thing with ESC off.

“It’s not diabolical. It doesn’t go into crazy oversteers. It wants to just understeer heavily through the middle of the corner and pulls hard, fast, clean, smooth, coming out of the corner. I shifted manually so I could run higher gears. I actually think it’s putting down power pretty well. I think it has a fairly strong tendency toward entry oversteer, and it’s another one of those kind of slow hands cars where you want to just kind of lay it into the corner. You don’t want to attack.

“I liked the steering, the accuracy of it. Someone told me the ratio is a little slower, but I didn’t even really notice it. I actually kind of like it. Makes it less severe. It felt a little softer. I think I might even have noticed that even if nobody told me. Or maybe I would have thought it was just me.”